


And Find Silence

by rhoswenmahariel (salutationtothestars)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Dragon Age Quest: In Hushed Whispers, F/M, Multiple Wardens, Not Canon Compliant, Not Really Character Death, Warden Inquisitor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 09:48:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6606271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salutationtothestars/pseuds/rhoswenmahariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sooner Rhoswen can go back in time to keep this future from happening, the better. Everything about it feels wrong - and not just her friends, or Fiona, left behind in the lower dungeon. Even the air crackles with an energy that bites in her lungs, making her feel particularly on edge. Is it possible the world itself knows she doesn’t belong? She isn’t sure. Dorian doesn’t have answers any more than she does, even if he postures, so she doesn’t ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Find Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [QueenofEden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenofEden/gifts).



> A re-imagining of the In Hushed Whispers quest, this takes place entirely within an AU of Dragon Age: Inquisition where the following changes have been made, among others:
> 
> 1) The Inquisitor is a former Hero of Ferelden, in the wrong place at the wrong time, again.  
> 2) There were two Wardens conscripted at the Battle of Ostagar: Rhoswen Mahariel, and Olympia Cousland. Thanks to the Dark Ritual, they both survived.  
> 3) Both Wardens traveled with Alistair when he left to look for his father, and met Varric and Isabela at that time.  
> 4) Anders and Nathaniel joined their former Warden Commanders on the search to cure the Calling, although it is presently on hold.  
> 5) Alistair arrived in Redcliffe's throne room a little earlier than he does in game.
> 
> As can be surmised, this AU is extremely specific and designed to make perfect sense only to a handful of people. Feel free to read anyway.

“They’re holding Varric here,” Cassandra says, still echoing herself in a chorus of smaller, tinny voices, the way Fiona had. Rhoswen isn’t sure why they sound so strange, so unsettling. She thinks it might be red lyrium growing on their vocal cords, but the idea is enough to make her sick. Too late, she tries to push it aside. “I saw them take him down these steps, once, when they were…” Cassandra pauses. “When they removed me from my cell.”

“Let’s hope they haven’t moved him, then,” Dorian says, following closely behind Rhoswen as they head down the stairs. “Time is of the essence, as it were.”

The glib way he speaks lingers in Rhoswen’s ears, makes her squirm at how flippantly he seems to consider their lives, their pain. She has no energy to call him on it. Instead, she focuses on the way her hands keep trying to go numb, clenching and unclenching her fists to save the feeling in them. Varric is here, rotting in a dungeon, slowly dying. Varric came here to protect her, to help her, and she repays that by abandoning him to suffer. Her knees feel weak, as if she might topple at any moment and break her neck on the stone steps, but they finally reach the bottom landing and emerge into another room. It looks the same as the others: damp and frigid, and singing oh so softly with a dull crimson glow. It’s funny, but she doesn’t remember the Redcliffe dungeons being this big. Which cell had Jowan sat in, while he waited for Eamon to hand down his fate?

“Varric?” Rhoswen calls softly, gritting her teeth against a shiver. “Varric, are you here?”

For a moment, only silence answers. In the middle cell on the right, the light suddenly changes, faint red shadows playing on the walls and making mildewed moisture look almost like blood. Two gloved hands wrap around the bars. A grizzled voice she recognizes even through the high-pitched rasp calls back, “Red?”

He looks just as bad as Cassandra, if not worse. His skin is tinged an ashy grey where the lyrium’s energy doesn’t spark, as if he’s been on death’s door for longer than she cares to imagine. There are new wrinkles creased in his face, not laugh lines or crow’s feet that crinkle when he smiles, but furrows that make him look severe. His clothes – faded, covered in holes, and likely the same ones he’d been wearing the day she disappeared – hang off him from all the weight he seems to have lost. Through all her staring, she fumbles with the lock, picking it as quickly as she can without breaking her tools. Varric watches her in disbelief.

“You died,” he says starkly, still gripping the iron bars. “We saw you die.”

“No,” Dorian says, clearly getting used to explaining their situation, “Alexius sent us into the future. By mistake, of course.”

Varric hesitates. That concept is a lot to take in, she knows. She’s surprised anyone’s believed it. “So the last time you saw us was…?”

“Ten minutes ago,” Dorian says. “At most.”

Varric whistles low, shaking his head. “You realize,” he adds, stepping back from the door as Rhoswen finds that final _click_ in the keyhole, “that everything that happens to you is weird.”

Rhoswen isn’t in the mood to reply. As soon as she throws open the door, she staggers into Varric’s arms, nearly knocking them both over. Chuckling, he puts one hand on the back of her head, just underneath her bun, and pulls her in tight. This close, she can hear the rattling sound of his breathing. It reminds her of stones grating against each other, or the death rattle of a man who’s had his throat cut. With a jerk, she stands again and steps backward out of his embrace.

“I’m so sorry,” she manages, after taking a deep, clear breath of her own.

“It’s not your fault." Varric looks past her at Dorian, and then at Cassandra. He swallows, twice, and his fingers twitch, but he stands still. “Did you tell them what happened?” he asks her. “About Celene and the Elder One?”

“Yes,” Cassandra says, almost softly. “I told them. It is good to see you still alive, Varric.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Varric laughs, offering her a sad smile, “but then again, I do look damn good for a dead man.”

“If you can get us to Alexius,” Dorian says, with the air of purposefully interrupting a moment to hurry it along, “then I have every chance of being able to send us back to our own time. Reverse his spell, as it were. Undo… all of this.”

“That’s a notion I can get behind, if it’s possible.” Somber again, Varric reaches out to take Rhoswen’s hand, stilling it in his grip. He squeezes her fingers. “Listen, Red, about Alistair–”

Rhoswen starts, a full-bodied reaction she doesn’t know how to control. “Cassandra told me that, too,” she stammers quickly, not wanting to have that particular discussion twice. She can still see the look on Alistair’s face as everything faded from sight, halfway into the room and shocked to find her there, of all places. “She said you weren’t sure what happened to him.”

“I saw him. I don’t know how long ago it was, but it was recent enough. He… didn’t look good, but he’s still alive. He has to be, if Alexius kept him going this long.”

“Are you sure?” Cassandra asks, raising her eyebrows. “I almost find it hard to believe… He was not well.”

“Definitely. It was him.” Dropping Rhoswen’s hand, Varric makes a face as he finds the right words for the look of horrified curiosity and confusion she’s sure she’s giving him. “When you died – vanished,” he corrects himself hastily, “it… hit him hard. We weren’t sure he was going to make it. Mentally or physically.”

“We’ll find him.” Cassandra puts a hand on Rhoswen’s shoulder as it slumps. She feels terrible, forcing them, of all people, to comfort her. They’ve spent a year with this torture, and she’s barely experienced it at all. What right does she have to command their sympathy?

“If His Majesty’s as fragile as you say,” Dorian muses, folding his arms and then putting a finger to his lips, “finding him might not be the best course of action. The shock of all this might do quite a bit of damage.”

“Alexius is our priority,” Rhoswen says. Her voice cracks. Unshed tears prickle at her, threatening to fall. Wrinkling her nose, she scrubs underneath her eye with the heel of a hand and coughs. “If we come across him on the way… but it shouldn’t matter anyway. Right?”

“I think not,” Dorian says, although he sounds more confident than he probably feels. “All we have to do is put ourselves back where we belong, like pieces in a puzzle.”

“We’ll see about that." Varric pats Rhoswen on the arm kindly as he walks past her out of his cell, a freer man than he had been an hour ago. A new sense of determination seems to fill him as he starts poking around junk piles and corpses for a weapon to use. Bianca, she thinks with an unpleasant pang, was probably confiscated and dismantled long before. “I’ve been around long enough to learn that plans are rarely as simple as we hope they’ll be.”

“The Maker gave you back to us for a reason.” Cassandra still hasn’t moved her hand from Rhoswen’s shoulder. She uses it to turn her so that they stand face-to-face, glowing red eyes meeting her green with a confidence Rhoswen could not match if she tried. “He would not give us this hope only to snatch it away again. Have courage.”

“You and I are familiar with two very different Makers,” Varric mutters, but there’s no heat behind it. Cassandra even smiles at him, with a weak grin that looks as if she’s nearly forgotten how to do it.

As soon as Varric is somewhat properly outfitted, testing the bow he found uncertainly, they move on, led just as uncertainly by Rhoswen. She might have known where they were headed once, but now? Redcliffe Castle is like a maze. Nothing looks familiar, and more than once, they’re forced to backtrack when she brings them to a dead end.

In time, they begin to see signs of more activity, and emerge into a hallway Rhoswen thinks she might recognize. There were once storerooms down this passage, although Creators know what those rooms are now, and from here, she thinks she might be able to find the courtyard. She tells the others this, not making any promises but walking with a little more assurance. The sooner they can go back in time to keep this future from happening, the better. Everything about it feels wrong, and not just her friends, or Fiona, left behind in the lower dungeon. Even the air crackles with an energy that bites in her lungs, making her feel particularly on edge. Is it possible the world itself knows she doesn’t belong? She isn’t sure. Dorian doesn’t have answers any more than she does, even if he postures, so she doesn’t ask.

Halfway up a flight of stairs, they begin to hear voices. At the sound, Cassandra holds up a hand and asks Rhoswen to wait, standing perfectly still with her eyes narrowed to slits. Rhoswen barely dares to breathe. Her ears twitch as she picks up a man’s voice, his words indistinct other than the way they’re harshly spoken, and then…

“It’s Leliana,” she says, her heart in her throat.

“Leliana?” Cassandra breathes. “Has she been here, all this time?”

“Fiona said–”

The unmistakable sound of a hard, heavy slap cuts her short. Rhoswen nocks an arrow as she runs, heading straight for a door at the top of the steps left slightly ajar. As they draw nearer, the man’s voice grows more distinct. He questions Leliana incessantly, punctuated by spat one-syllable answers from the voice she once heard sing such beautiful songs. She aches to throw open the door and barge in, to plant an arrow in Leliana's tormentor's heart, but it’s impossible to say if he has a weapon on her, or if he’s a mage. What if her recklessness gets Leliana killed? What would Olympia–?

Leliana’s eyes meet hers through the gap in the door, brilliantly blue against the deathly pallor of her skin. She dangles from the ceiling, looking withered and grey like Varric, although there’s no trace of the red lyrium building inside her. Instead, she almost looks… blighted. Her face is weathered and leathery, as if she is a hundred years old and not forty. The hard line of her brows and the twist of her sneer do not change, but the Tevinter notices the new draw on her attention, and spins to meet Rhoswen’s gaze. He already has a knife in one hand, coated with dried blood, and looks more than ready to use it again.

A haze of battle panic erupts in Rhoswen’s mind, pinning her to the spot, unable even to draw her bow. Leliana has no such trouble. As Varric throws open the door, she surges upward against her chains and reaches out for the Tevinter’s neck with her legs, gathering him tight in a chokehold. He struggles for a moment, uselessly grasping at her thighs to loosen her grip, his helm slowly popping off as she applies pressure to his neck. Finally, with a series of sharp twists, a piercing crack fills the room. Leliana lets him slip to the floor and goes limp, breathing heavily.

“This is impossible,” she gasps, glaring as Rhoswen fumbles with the ring of keys on the dead man’s belt. “We mourned you.”

“Please,” Rhoswen whispers. She doesn’t know why she says it. Once both of her hands are free, Leliana spares herself a moment to rub her wrists and eye her suspiciously, completely distrusting what she sees. Rhoswen doesn’t know how to prove who she is, or how to make her believe she is so, so sorry. Instead of doing either, she stands there and stares.

“Leliana,” Cassandra says, a small note of horror in her tone. “What have they done to you?”

Leliana’s intense eyes flick to her for a moment, scrutinizing her. What she sees makes her soften, for only a heartbeat, and then her expression closes up again.

“Nothing you would like to hear,” she snaps. She notices the bow held clumsily in Varric’s hand, scowls at the dead man on the floor, and turns to a table piled with metal instruments. They seem to have been designed for torture, and still crusted in fluids and bits of something Rhoswen tries not to recognize. Underneath a set of tongs, Leliana finds a misshapen knife, curved like a dragon’s tooth and jagged around the edges from rust, and then retrieves the other knife her captor had dropped on the floor. She prefers the bow these days, she’d told her, as they chatted quietly under the stone arches of Haven’s Chantry, but now she makes no complaint.

“You don’t care where we’ve been?” Dorian asks, a genuinely confused quirk to his brow. “Or how we got here?”

“No,” Leliana says, sticking the knives in trouser loops hidden underneath her hauberk. She looks smaller, somehow, without a weapon on her back. Rhoswen would share her arrows, already divided in half between herself and Varric, and there are more they’ve been gathering from the dead... But they would need another bow, and have yet to find one not broken beyond repair. “Either you are truly here, or you aren’t. I’ll not waste this chance, regardless.”

“But we are here.” Dorian takes a step forward as though he means to touch her. She gives him a steely look. He doesn’t quite recoil, but his spine stiffens, and he rolls his fingers into a loose fist. “Alexius tried to kill us, to be sure, but instead, we were displaced. Pulled out of time, and dropped here. If we confront him, we may be able to change this so none of it ever happens. You won’t have to suffer this, not truly.”

This time, Leliana surges forward, looking for all the world like a snake about to strike. Dorian draws back again, startled, but Rhoswen only flinches in place. She realizes, belatedly, that she’s been crying a little. A few tears gather at the corner of her mouth so she can taste them. “I _did_ suffer,” Leliana spits. “I endured horrors beyond your understanding. We all did. This may not be real to you, but it was real to us.” She gestures to Cassandra and Varric, who stand still with their lips pressed into hard lines, their red eyes flashing. “You cannot erase that, not even with magic.”

“I wasn’t trying–” Dorian gently protests. Leliana snorts, fixing Rhoswen with a look as keen as if it had come from her ravens. Where Rhoswen bites her lip and wipes at the tear track on her cheek, Leliana remains almost passive, like everything but rage was burned out of her long ago. Maybe that’s true.

“I prayed that you would return,” Leliana says quietly, though her tone is no less cold. “I held Olympia as she sobbed, and promised that I would bring you back. And here you are,” she laughs, “but far too late.”

Olympia’s name hits her as physically as a blow. Rhoswen looks around the room as if she’ll see her hiding in the corners, tucked away just out of sight. “Olympia?” she asks, nearly shouting.

“She’s gone.”

Cassandra draws in a truncated breath. Varric reaches out to brush Rhoswen’s arm, to offer his support. She jerks it away on instinct, as if she’s been stung. It feels that way. The pain sits in her chest, radiating outward until it fills her body with a shrill whine. Everything gets worse, and worse, and it is becoming harder to tell herself that this future does not matter, that they will wipe all this clean like a slate.

Somehow, she finds herself asking another question: “Was she here?” It isn't the question she wants to ask. Those pile up in her mind. Will they find her corpse somewhere, decorating the castle walls? Were her bones cast into the harbor, washed away at sea? It’s important she knows, even if she dreads hearing it, so she can be ready when they stumble on her open wounds, gaping eyes...  _Mythal’enaste_...

Leliana’s mouth pulls at the corners. It’s all the change in expression they get. “She never made it inside.”

Nothing else needs to be said. Leliana falls in with them as they walk in a hush, her eyes darting everywhere the way a good bard’s should. Rhoswen only dares to look directly at her once, taking in the sickliness of her face, the way her flesh almost seems to be rotting from the bone. Her nose appears to be sagging, something she wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t seen Leliana just a few days before. The hair she can still see under her cowl seems brittle, and might be missing in patches. After a moment, Leliana turns to scowl back, running her through as surely as a blade. The pallid blue of her eyes against the blackened dead skin around them is unsettling, but she does not turn away. Leliana deserves better than that.

What must be several minutes later, they finally emerge from the dungeons and into the underground harbor, the crisp smell of the sea overwhelmed by the stench of corruption. It hangs in the air like a fog, especially over a sigil drawn on the stone floor, blotted out with a pool of blood that undoubtedly came from an exsanguinated body lying nearby. Near the wooden docks, a demon prowls, oozing between fishing nets with a low rumble. Several arrows and a freezing spell from Dorian make short work of it. Even as the demon howls and claws in their direction, it shrivels and sinks into the ground. Leliana hangs back, her hands on the knives she took while she waits for the all clear. That’s good, Rhoswen thinks, retrieving the arrows left abandoned without a body to stick in. Her anger hasn’t made her reckless.

The fighting in the courtyard is much worse. Twisted architecture creates spaces for both Tevinter warriors and demons to hide in ambush. Red lyrium strangles the trees, choking them out like weeds and leaving them barren and white. One of Alexius’s men nearly presses Rhoswen against an outcrop of crystal, battering at her with his shield as she staggers backwards. Before she can touch it, curving her back so the lyrium barely skirts her quiver, Leliana steps up behind him as silent as a shadow and runs the jagged knife over his throat. The blood spatters over Rhoswen’s front, disgustingly warm. When she opens her eyes again, Leliana is halfway across the field, dodging the swoop of an épée bâtarde. Rhoswen puts an arrow through the attacker’s arm, ruining his swing, and then another through a hole in his helm.

“Shit,” she hears Varric curse, one of his own arrows going wide. Dorian makes up for his mistake, summoning a fire trap with a flick of his wrist, but Varric still spares the bow in his hands a glower. “I’d trade with Nightingale if I wasn’t even worse with a blade,” he shouts, his twisted voice echoing eerily off the floating columns.

They manage to finish off the last of their enemies with only minor injuries: a few scrapes here and there, a knee Cassandra limps on for several minutes until she shakes off the pain, and a shallow cut over Leliana’s eyebrow. It doesn’t bleed. Leliana swipes at the spot with a hand, daring anyone to mention it with the way her gaze sweeps over her glove and then their faces. No one tries.

Somehow, the royal wing is colder than the dungeons were. Rhoswen’s breath clouds in front of her face, dissipating again as she picks her way across the debris-strewn hallways. They walk slowly, partially to accommodate Cassandra’s knee, which threatens to give when she puts too much weight on it. It smells more musty than corrupted through here, which means this part of the castle likely hasn’t been used much in a very long time. Does Alexius sleep here, she wonders, in one of these abandoned bedrooms? Or does he sleep in the throne room, never far from his seat of power?

Outside one of the doors, a low hum of male voices makes Rhoswen stop.

“Venatori?” Cassandra murmurs, a hand on the hilt of her sword.

“…want to do this,” one man says, enunciating clearly, as if he is trying to draw attention. “Think of your mother, waiting for you to come home. Your father…”

“They aren’t waiting,” says the other man, in a half-wail of despair. “Nobody is. It would be better if I had died, better if you hadn’t saved my life. I won’t be part of this!”

“Connor, don’t!”

Connor.

Without stopping to think, Rhoswen storms forward and pushes open the door. Someone makes a noise of protest behind her, but she doesn’t care. Past a long carpet and a pile of timber where the ceiling caved in, Connor Guerrin stands near a fireplace. He turns to the noise she makes like a deer at the snap of a twig. Behind him, something stirs in the air, the barest suggestion of a figure leering over him in a hungry, predatory way. A demon, Rhoswen realizes, her insides twisting at the memory of a little boy speaking in a grown, rasping voice. Not again.

“Connor!” the first man repeats. Rhoswen can’t take her eyes away to see who it is.

“No!” Connor cries. Flicking his wrist just the way Dorian had earlier, he suddenly bursts into a bright wall of flame, overpowered and hot. It is nothing like the blaze already in the fireplace. Rhoswen can feel the heat of it across the room, leaping high and consuming him in what feels like an instant. Before she can do or say anything, he crumbles into ashes and is gone, his magic dying out as quickly as it sprang up. The demon jumps forward, a blur sailing over the carpet, but it only gets a short distance before the shimmering is gone. Dorian shakes his head a little, and then again, slower, mournfully.

“He wouldn’t have held out much longer,” he says, as if it’s a eulogy. “Despair demons often get what they want, in the end. What he did was very brave.”

Chains clink in the corner of the room out of Rhoswen’s sight. She turns as the man moans, a broken, pitiful sound that makes her feel sorry for ignoring him. At the sight of his face, her legs nearly buckle, holding steady only for the way she goes rigid as a board.

“King Alistair?” Cassandra gasps.

It is.

Alistair sags against the wall from iron shackles, his eyes barely visible through clumps of too-long, dried out hair. Alexius was gracious enough to give him leeway to stand, but no more: his wrists are chafed bloody where he’s done this before, too exhausted to keep himself upright. His skin is the same sickly tint as the others’, but covered in sores and pockmarks, and he looks… oh, Creators, he looks as if he should have left for his Calling months ago. How can that be possible, when he should still have nearly twenty years left?

This time, when Rhoswen’s stomach roils, she can’t stop it. Turning away, she heaves and spatters a bit of bile on the ground. Nothing else comes up, even as she continues to shake. Leliana spares her a quick, inscrutable look before she goes to Alistair’s side and takes out tools to pick the locks and set him free. With so many extra years of practice, she does it quickly, her hands as steady as they’ve ever been. Alistair blearily peers up at her while she works, his warm brown eyes fogged over by a milky white mist.

“He did it,” he says softly, almost lost over the clanking chains. “I couldn’t stop him.”

“It isn’t your fault." It’s as gentle a response as she’s heard from Leliana in what feels like a hundred lifetimes. Alistair groans again. Once he’s loose, he collapses onto the ground.

Rhoswen should go to him. She should take his face in her hands, and plead for his forgiveness; how could she let this happen? When she tries, her feet won’t carry her. She stands still, hunched over, the smell of her vomit already wafting into her nostrils, and she stares. Alistair stares back. Lifting himself on arms that tremble with exertion, he takes a shuddering breath.

“I can’t decide,” he wheezes, “if this is another kind of torture, or some depraved attempt at mercy.”

“It is a prison break, Your Majesty,” Cassandra says. Shooting Rhoswen an unfathomable look, she crosses to his side and gestures for Leliana to help. Together, they manage to push and prod him to his feet. Once he’s upright, Leliana withdraws again to a safe distance, letting him lean heavily against Cassandra in spite of her complaining knee. She pulls his arm over her shoulder, the only one of them tall enough to support him, and offers her best reassuring voice. It falls a little flat. “We have a plan to change what happened here. To us, and to the world.”

“Great,” Alistair gasps, still trying to regain his breath. “Easy. I’ve done this before.”

“We have to get to the Great Hall,” Dorian says, turning to face the door. He seems less bombastic now, drained of energy and, perhaps, patience. “After all the commotion we’ve made, Alexius may know that we’re coming. We don’t want to give him time to set up defenses.”

Cassandra does not make to follow him. Instead, she holds Alistair steady and glances at Rhoswen again, as if unsure. Can Rhoswen leave the room without speaking to him? His eyes are still locked on hers, drinking her in like a man dying of thirst. He waits so patiently for her to acknowledge him, to prove she isn’t a demon come to drag him down. She isn’t sure she can do that. Her heart beats hard enough to burst out of her chest, spilling out all the hurts she can’t imagine ever recovering from. Her friends are lost. Olympia is dead. Out there, in the wider world, Alexius’s Elder One cuts a swath through Thedas, a reaper at harvest. Who knows how many places and people she loves there are left?

Taking uncertain steps, she pieces her way across the floor to him.

“Alistair,” she says. He tries to draw himself straighter, still hanging to Cassandra, and winces. It’s the king in him, she thinks, not so easily beaten out even after a year of imprisonment. He grew to be such a good ruler, a good man. Her heart thrums in her throat. “Alistair,” she says again.

“That’s me,” he says softly. Reaching out a shaking hand, she catches some of the hair in his face between her fingers, brushing it out of the way. A thin layer of scruff covers his chin, not long, but certainly unclean. He never has been able to grow out his beards. She nearly laughs, the feeling sticking in her throat. Alistair swallows. “Is it really you?”

For her answer, she places her palm on his face. Her fingers curve against his cheekbone and underneath his ear. The flesh they touch is surprisingly hot, burning with the blood fever killing him from the inside.

“We have to go,” Rhoswen says, pressing even closer. His eyes fall shut, sparing her of their blank, eerie film, the deadened way they don’t seem to catch any light. Her forehead finds his, and she closes her eyes, too. The heat of him sears against her. “Can you walk?”

Alistair laughs in his winded, smitten way, a short exhale of breath more to do with her than disbelief or pain. For a moment, she can almost picture herself at home in Denerim, leaning against him in his bedroom, listening to the way he huffs when she surprises him. In a way, she has surprised him. “You’re alive,” he sighs. His nose rubs against hers as he turns his head. “I’ll go anywhere you ask.”

He can walk, although he relies on Cassandra’s grip to help support his own weight, at first. Alistair hadn’t been chained long, he promises, only an hour or so after he’d been dragged downstairs to… and there he stops. As his voice falters, he purposefully avoids Rhoswen’s gaze, shaking his head when Dorian presses him a little further. Instead, he focuses on guiding them through the castle, instrumental in finding the way when Rhoswen’s recollection gives in. He grew up here, after all. Rhoswen wonders if he has vivid memories of running through these halls, sliding down banisters and causing trouble, or if most of his memories are of the kennels, the stables, or kitchens and servants’ quarters.

The stairwell he leads them to is steep, and turns an about face halfway down. Alistair can’t help a grimace, offering an apology to Cassandra for having to lug him down every step. She waves it away, and begins the slow process of guiding him, one foot in front of another, her hand tight in his over her shoulder. Dorian walks slightly ahead, matching their pace without complaint, obviously meaning himself as a buffer in case Alistair begins to fall. For her part, Rhoswen follows behind. She feels as if she’s fluttering, nervous as a bird, her hands darting out every few moments to steady them both and pulling back before she touches.

At the bottom, Alistair heaves a great sigh. Slowly and deliberately, he pulls his arm from Cassandra’s shoulders and walks a few tentative paces on his own. He holds up a placating hand as Rhoswen reaches for him again. “I’m all right. Thank you,” he adds to Cassandra, inclining his head politely. “I might have had quite the tumble if I tried that alone.”

“You’re still weak,” Varric says. Somehow, he states it as fact without sounding patronizing or rude. He walks to Alistair’s side, standing at his elbow and offering him an affected grin. “Leave the fighting to us for now.”

Behind a closed door, they hear a rift, hissing and spitting, and the heavy tramp of armored feet. Rhoswen’s hand sparks, shooting lines of green lightning between her fingers. Alistair notices, visibly taken aback, but he makes no comment. She’s grateful for it. They wait until he tucks himself out of sight, an iron-wrought torch at his feet in case he has to defend himself in a pinch, and then Leliana pulls the door inward, so slow it doesn’t creak. No one notices their entrance until she puts a knife through one spellbinder’s back, his cry interrupted by blood welling in his mouth.

Overhead, the rift sputters with energy, creating the bizarre swirls on the ground Dorian refers to as time magic. The mark twinges in response, making her left hand twitch. It doesn’t hurt so much anymore, now that she’s used to it, but more than once, the twitch is so strong she nearly drops her bow. This rift is powerful, and different: tainted by whatever Alexius has done and swollen by its predecessor, large enough now to have swallowed the sky. As soon as they clear most of the demons away, she calls up the magic sitting at the back of her mind, waiting to feel her touch, and sends it shooting for the center of the rift.

After all this time, she still isn’t sure how it works. Even mages can’t always explain the source of their abilities, how they know from where to pull the energy and how to send it away. Wynne told her once that the strongest spells pooled in the bottom of her stomach, gathering strength until it rose with enough force to startle even herself, sometimes. This is nothing like that. She forgets the cold, lingering feel of the breach magic on purpose, when she doesn’t need it. When she does, the act is nearly instinctual. On the rare occasion, she still feels Solas’s grip on her wrist. He'd held her left hand high, his own particular brand of spell work… shaping hers, she thinks. It’s all beyond her understanding. All that matters is that the tear responds, knitting itself closed with a great burst of light and sound, and the monsters it spewed forth disappear again.

As soon as he catches his breath, Dorian turns his attention to the far end of the hall, where the great double doors block their entry to what was once Arl Teagan’s throne room. She and Olympia had visited Redcliffe only once after Teagan took over, formally paying their respects and admiring the latest cosmetic renovations to the castle. When Eamon was still Arl, before the end of the Blight, they met in that room more than once to discuss battle strategies, to plan their trip to Denerim for the Landsmeet, even to convene over poor Connor’s fate. Now, the room belongs to Alexius, and he sits in Teagan’s seat as he oversees the destruction of Thedas.

“So,” Varric says to Rhoswen, his eyes on Leliana as she picks through the pockets of the men they’ve left dead on the floor. “What happens after we take down Alexius? Do we get him to send you back?”

For her part, Rhoswen watches Dorian. He makes his way to the landing, pausing in front of the throne room’s entryway and examining something she assumes is a laughably big lock. Of course, Alexius would seal himself in. Things can’t ever be simple, even now.

“I don’t know,” she says honestly, shaking her head. “That part is up to Dorian. He’s the only one who understands how any of this works.”

Alistair gingerly makes his way across the room to them, still walking somewhat unsteadily but under his own power. Cassandra offers her arm in what strikes Rhoswen as a very gallant gesture, her heart swelling with affection for the Seeker. He only shakes his head.

“We can trust him?” Cassandra asks. “He has had ample opportunity to betray us, and yet…”

“I’m sure.”

The tone of finality in her own voice surprises her. Cassandra nods, a sharp sign of assent, and that’s the end of the matter. Dorian calls them over, not bothering to keep his voice down and give them hope of ambushing Alexius. Chances are he already heard the fighting anyway, if he can hear anything at all.

“It’s no good,” Dorian says once they’ve all gathered round. He puts his thumb into a depression on the steel panel over the door. “Something fits inside here, some kind of key. Five of them. My guess is he has trusted Venatori keeping them for him.”

Varric grunts with displeasure. “What are we looking for?”

“Red lyrium, I suspect. No chipped off shard will do, either. They should be smooth, rounded, see – just here.” Abruptly, Leliana steps forward, past Dorian, and places something in one of the holes. A little red sphere holds there, even as she takes her hand away, and the mechanism lets out a series of short clicks. Blinking in surprise, Dorian almost runs his finger over the shard’s marble-like surface, but he withdraws at a warning noise from Varric. “Yes,” he says, looking at Leliana with a crooked smile. “Like that. Well done.”

“The rest of them must be close,” Leliana says, ignoring his praise. “It will be faster if we split up.”

Ever the strategist, Cassandra examines the hall in a slow, steady arc. “Go with Dorian,” she tells Leliana. “Help him search. The castle does not go on forever; eventually, we will find something. You,” she adds, as Rhoswen turns to follow Leliana out of the room, “should stay here. Both of you. Keep each other safe, and watch for any signs of trouble. We will return quickly.”

Alistair snorts ruefully, but does not otherwise object. As Varric presses Rhoswen’s hand, giving his own promise that they’ll be back as soon as they can, Leliana leads Dorian out of the room. They take a door that Rhoswen thinks once led to the castle library. Cassandra waits for Varric at the bottom of the steps. When he joins her, she strikes up a hushed conversation, too low for even Rhoswen’s ears to pick up, and they leave in the opposite direction. All they can do now is sit, she supposes, and talk, although the idea of a casual conversation with Alistair is ludicrous. Is she supposed to bring up the weather?

Still, after only a breath’s worth of hesitation, she joins him when he pats the step next to his seat, where he gingerly placed himself with a few groans of thinly veiled pain. He leaves his hand between them, pressed against cold stone that must be soothing to the touch. She realizes with a jolt that a few of his fingernails are missing. Before she can stop herself, she reaches down and wraps her fingers around his. The touch surprises him as much as it does her.

“Did they do this?” she asks, choking back the tears that threaten to fall again.

Alistair looks down at his hands, a familiar befuddled wrinkle appearing between his pale, sickly eyes. “Do what?” he asks, and then he sees, and shakes his head. “No, no. They… I’ve heard,” he adds, swallowing, “when you’re… supposed to go. On the… well, you know. If you put it off too long, things like that can happen. It’s like your hair falling out, I suppose. Mine hasn’t done, yet, but I…”

Alistair trails off. She’s glad of it – if she hears more, she thinks she might die.

“This was never supposed to happen.” Rhoswen clutches to Alistair so tightly, her fingers go white. “All of it: this world, this… future. It’s my fault.”

“It isn’t.” Alistair speaks so, so softly. He tries to console her, just as Varric had, his gentle voice like Cassandra’s hand on her shoulder, and it makes her feel worse than ever. “How could anyone blame you, when you’re what keeps this from happening?”

“You’re dying.” She can’t finish the word. It dies, too, halfway out of her mouth, but Alistair seems to understand anyway.

“If what you said was true,” he says, “then it doesn’t matter, does it? You’ll fix this, and none of it will happen. I won’t be dying when you go back. This…” Alistair stops. Rhoswen crinkles her nose against the feeling of a sob building in her chest, desperate and angry, just waiting to tear its way out. She knows what he was going to say – Dorian said it, too, in so many words, and as many times as she tells herself, she can’t find a way to believe it.

“It matters,” Rhoswen chokes out. What I did to you matters, she wants to say, but her throat closes up, and all that’s left is a mad pulsing in her heart, making her blood race and boil from within. Is that how it feels, when you begin to hear the Old Gods? At first, she isn’t sure how to ask. They grasp each other's hands like frightened children while they listen to the wind whistle and the sky crack, far above the vaulted ceiling. By the time she thinks she knows how to speak again, she isn’t sure how long it’s been since the others left. She wonders if they’re all dead. “Do you hear the song?”

Alistair doesn’t want to answer. He shuffles his feet, in his threadbare boots, and won’t look her in the eye. She sees when he lands on an acceptable reply, something close to the truth and yet designed to spare her feelings. In the depths of her soul, a small part of her hates him for it. “It’s quieter,” he says slowly, “now that you’re here.”

Tears bead in his clouded eyes, leaking down his cheeks into what stubble he’s accumulated, and suddenly, she’s lost. They sit together, weeping in the dark, empty hall, the only point of contact between them his hand desperately tangled with hers.

 

* * *

 

Rhoswen holds her bow, drawn and at the ready, as the others hold their breath behind her. They all wait for the inevitable spring, their weapons clutched in steady hands, even Alistair. He holds a sword and shield, abandoned long ago by one of the bodies littering the main hall. They fit in his grip like he’s held them all his life. Slowly and gracefully, as if by a well-trained servant, the doors into the throne room open. The five lyrium shards clatter to the floor, their job done, and Rhoswen braces herself for some sort of trap.

It never comes. Up the steps to twin daises, Alexius stares into the fireplace, the only source of heat and light in the otherwise dim chamber, and he is alone. At least, Rhoswen thinks so, at first. As they carefully advance into the hall, she sees another man half hidden in the shadows, hunched in on himself like an animal. Something in him calls out to her: a cry in his veins, like a beacon, drawing her attention. Blighted, then, and far gone – it’s Felix. He’s been insensate for ages, if she’s any judge. The poor boy.

Their boots are muffled by the thick Antivan carpet beneath them, stained with blood and beyond repair, but they are not silent. Alexius must hear the clank of armor, the rustle of fabric, or even the bending wood of their bows, and yet, he won’t move. Dorian visibly strains against himself, taut as Varric’s string and just as ready to snap, but he waits for Rhoswen’s signal. Simple as it would be to put an arrow through his head, to let Cassandra step up close and run him through, the look in Dorian’s eyes stops her from giving the order. Alexius and Felix are lost from him, too. Even if it isn’t the wise thing to do, she doesn’t know if she can stomach the idea of killing Alexius without speaking with him first.

Alistair meets her frown with a grim expression of his own when she turns to ask them to hold. He seems worn, and exhausted, but then, so do they all. She looks into their faces – his, Cassandra’s and Varric’s – and only pain looks back.

“All this suffering,” Rhoswen says, facing Alexius at the bottom of the second set of stairs. He turns his head just a little, not enough that he can see where she stands. Felix leans forward in a sway, his expression devoid of any understanding. “Is this what you wanted?”

Alexius sighs, a wearier sound than she might have expected. “I wanted my son,” he says, still facing the fire. “I wanted him healthy, and whole, the way he was before. I wanted… but it doesn’t matter anymore. The Elder One comes for us all. It’s too late.”

Dorian takes another step closer, making an aborted move to reach out before he stops short. “What have you done?” he asks, as if he expects an answer. “How could you? After everything you taught me, Alexius. What makes a man lose sight of himself like this?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alexius repeats. “I have tried, time and again, to fix the past. Saving Felix, killing you? I was unable to succeed, no matter how desperate the attempt. This is all there is left: ruin and death, and nothing else. All we can do is wait.”

An arm shoots out of the shadows near Felix, startling them all. Leliana emerges from between two columns at the side of the room, hefting Felix up by the back of his robes. She adjusts her grip, catching his dead weight against her, and uses her free hand to put the dragon’s tooth knife to his neck. Alexius gasps, his staff clattering to the floor as he stretches both arms toward his son.

“Felix!” he cries. “You can’t!”

“You kept him alive like this?” Dorian's mouth curls with revulsion. “A prisoner in his own body?”

“He isn’t alive,” Alistair says darkly. “There is no life like that. Everything that made him who he was is gone.”

Alexius does not seem to hear. “My boy,” he pleads, nearly wringing his hands. “Let go of my boy; I’ll give you anything. Whatever you want. Don’t hurt my son.”

“That isn’t your son anymore.” Rhoswen shakes her head, catching Leliana’s gaze. The dagger at Felix’s throat inches closer, so near he might be able to feel it on his skin. He gives no indication he can. His head lolls, and blank eyes stare out at Alexius dispassionately. “No one deserves to live this way.”

Leliana draws the dagger in a thin, straight line. Black blood spatters out in a feeble gush. Felix gurgles, coughing, and then he slips out of Leliana’s arms, gracelessly collapsing on the floor in a boneless slump.

Alexius falls to his knees. “No,” he whispers, staring at his son with wide, horrified eyes.

“Alexius..." Dorian takes another step.

“No!”

With a quick hand, Alexius grabs for his staff and swings it in a wide arc. Green flares shoot from its spearhead tip and arc over their heads, forking off each other like lightning. Dorian ducks, nearly tripping as he jumps away from his former mentor, and Varric curses as he lets an arrow fly. Alexius batters it away with a practiced twirl. Pointing the staff at Rhoswen, he begins the workings of a complicated spell that stinks of rift magic. Her nostrils burn the way they do when they find tears out in the field, the sulfurous smell she’s come to hate increased almost twofold, as he rips holes in the Veil directly in front of her.

Someone holds a battered shield in front of her, blocking her from Alexius’s reach. Rhoswen doesn’t have to look to know that it’s Alistair, holding his sword slightly at length so she’s caged under his guard. It’s a move he’s done before, when they’ve fought together in the past, and he’s saved her life with it more than once. Planting her feet, she steadies herself and waits for the air to split.

The magic dies before it comes to fruition, leaving that lingering stench in the air behind. Alexius makes a noise strikingly similar to his son’s, his mouth agape in pain and surprise. Behind him, Leliana hovers close, one blade buried in his shoulder and the other hidden from sight. His robes turn dark at his stomach.

Leliana leaves Alexius on the ground next to his son, dead before he hits the floor. His blood mingles in a pool with the tainted, blackened blood Felix steadily oozes, and his eyes stay open, unblinking.

Dorian covers his own eyes with one hand, pressing fingers and thumb into his temples.

“Oh,” he sighs, sounding tired. “Oh, Alexius.”

Rhoswen puts one hand on Alistair and lowers his shield, moving through the protective circle of his arms to approach Dorian. His attitude makes sense, now: the irreverent disregard for how hurtful their situation was, how eager he was to press on. He understands. He has understood, all this time, but he’s tried so desperately not to let it touch him. The façade cracked anyway, in spite of all his pretending.

Gently, she touches Dorian’s elbow, seizing his attention. He looks down at her and raises his brows. “In our time,” she says, speaking slowly, “Alexius hasn’t gone this far. He’s still redeemable. When we go home, you’ll make him see.”

Dorian’s brows shoot just a bit higher, and then furrow together as he studies her face. Rhoswen can’t smile at him reassuringly, or offer him any other words of compassion, so she looks back with the most open expression she has. Whatever he sees in her, he seems to find it acceptable. “Thank you,” he murmurs. Pressing his lips together as if to keep from saying more, he passes Leliana up the steps as she makes her way down, holding the bloody daggers in each fist like she still expects an attack.

“Time hasn’t dulled your skills or speed, Leliana,” Cassandra offers.

Leliana barks a short laugh, but it isn’t hateful, or full of disdain. It sounds almost like a laugh Rhoswen might have heard years ago, on a sunny market day in Denerim, or around a campfire. It seems to startle even Leliana, but she does not try to take it back. “Nor yours. It is… good, to fight at your side again. Whatever the circumstances.”

“Here,” Dorian says, rejoining their little huddle. Clenched in his fist, he holds what looks like a necklace: a green, square crystal dangling at the end of a thin piece of cord. Rhoswen recognizes it as Alexius’s, the one he’d held up when he first banished them from his hall. He lifts it up for them to see. “We created this together, he and I. With a little time, I can use it to determine exactly which spell Alexius cast, and send us back.”

“You don’t know?” Varric asks, incredulous. “Didn’t you just say you worked on that with him?”

“Alexius kept his secrets,” Dorian says, “and this is one of them. I need an hour, although it may be less.”

“An hour!?” Leliana exclaims.

The castle rumbles. In the middle of her argument, Leliana snaps her mouth shut, bracing herself against the way the ground beneath them quakes. Stones drop from the ceiling, shaking loose with an incredible, furious vigor, and somewhere high above, a creature howls. The noise is draconic, Rhoswen thinks, recognizing the peculiar way high dragons cry out for their young, or out of rage, or for blood – but something in it reminds her of the way Cassandra and Varric speak. It rings with the taint of red lyrium.

Even as the unearthly screaming dies away, the castle continues to quiver, little tremors like aftershocks as whatever landed above them scrapes its talons and, by the sound of it, paces back and forth.

“He knows you’re here,” Leliana says, her voice low, almost devoid of emotion. “He has come for you.”

There is no need to explain who she means.

Dorian whirls to face Rhoswen, giving her a surprisingly desperate look. “I have to have time,” he says quickly, as if she can supply what he asks. “We can’t take the chance of my getting it wrong. What if I sent us even farther forward, or too far back?”

Before she can answer, Varric steps in the middle of their ragged circle, facing Rhoswen with as serious an expression as she’s ever seen him wear. There’s been far too much of this, she thinks wildly, of people looking to her for answers when she hasn’t any even for herself. She nearly misses the days when no one paid much attention to her at all, when so many believed she’d been little better than Alistair and Olympia’s pack mule. Back then, she could skirt through a room unseen, never asked to explain herself or pestered for anything, and now? Even Varric looks up at her with expectations, whether he means to or not, and the weight of it all has never felt heavier.

“Red,” he says, and then he pauses. Cassandra moves to stand at his back, her gaze turned to the double doors. As she draws near, he takes another breath and starts again. “Cassandra and I will hold the hall, for as long as we can. After that…” He tapers off, completely unlike his usual effusive behavior, with words at the ready no matter what their circumstances. Even then, it takes Rhoswen a minute to realize what he means.

“Varric,” she says, breathless as if he punched her in the stomach.

“You need time, and that is what we can give you.” Cassandra’s jaw is set, and she looks immovable. The thin line of her mouth and the clench of her fist insist nothing can change her mind. “To stop this, it is the least we can do.”

Rhoswen can’t give her permission. They aren’t asking for it, she realizes, but the wrench in her gut refuses to let her condone this sacrifice, no matter how much sense it makes. As she struggles with what to say, knowing she can never thank them or wish them well in battle, not when they intend to die for her sake, Alistair stands a little straighter and nods down at Varric.

“I’ll go too.”

Rhoswen feels her world shake, nothing to do with the dragon up above, and thinks she might be sick again. It’s all she can do not to scream. “No.”

“Please,” Alistair says, his throat thick with sorrow, or pride, or disease, she doesn’t know.

“No,” she says again. “You can’t. I won’t…”

“You didn’t think I could come with you?” Alistair speaks to her as if they’re the only ones in the room, and gently, in a tone she might use to explain something difficult to a child. When he comes closer, reaching for her hand with the arm still bearing a shield, she steps away, shaking her head. He can’t touch her, when he means to leave her behind. She won’t let him. “I can’t go back, darling, not like this. There’s no life for me like this. Not for anyone.”

He simmers beneath his skin, and hears the Calling in his head, taking him the way of the ghouls. Leliana decays from the inside and looks at her with such anger, still raw over the loss of Olympia, the love of her life. Cassandra and Varric suffocate on red lyrium, feeling it grow its way out, until they will eventually become like Fiona downstairs, or worse. There is nothing left for any of them except death, however it comes, at the hands of this Elder One or her own. Even so, it still hurts, a blade in her chest twisting as she looks between them all and sees the solemn acceptance in their eyes.

All she can do is jerk her chin, up and down. “Go, then,” she manages between gritted teeth. “Go.”

Cassandra turns away. Varric gives her a steady look, as if there’s more he wants to say, but in the end, he turns, too, and joins Cassandra by the door. Something passes between them, a quiet word, a quick, subtle gesture, but Rhoswen focuses closest on Alistair. He draws near again, slow enough to give her the chance to recoil. This time, she stays. Dropping the shield to rest against his knees, he brings his hand up to cup her jaw, his weathered thumb nestled underneath her cheekbone. He’s so tall, she thinks, rather stupidly. She can see the places where he used to be, under hair like hay, and pockmarks, and sallow, washed out skin where bruises are only just fading.

Alistair leans in. On instinct, she turns her face up, lifting to her toes for a kiss, but instead, he presses his chapped lips to her forehead.

“Come home to me,” he whispers against her. “Come home.”

They pull the double doors closed behind them as they go. Alistair spares her a last look while they shut, and Varric says, as his final goodbye, “Fly straight, Nightingale.” Rhoswen does not cry. Her chest heaves as though she means to, but there isn’t anything in her, for now, so she puts the feeling aside, and turns her attention to Leliana.

“Take this,” she says, pulling her bow and quiver off her back. She practically shoves them into her hands, almost dumping the arrows onto the floor. Leliana accepts them without question. She tests the draw and nods, her thank you. Rhoswen crafted that bow herself at the forges in Haven, helped by eager assistants, and urged on by the blacksmith, Harrit. He was as impatient as Master Ilen of the Sabrae had been. She almost feels a pang at its loss, but it’s gone before it lands, inconsequential, and she lets it go.

“Rhoswen,” Leliana says.

She waits. Dorian stands on the top dais, well away from where Alexius and Felix lay, picking over the amulet and muttering to himself. Rhoswen might be of some help to him, she thinks, even if only as a sounding board, but he can wait a moment longer. No noises come through the double doors, guarded by their protectors, their friends. She hopes that means they still have some time.

Leliana doesn’t seem to know what to say. She studies her, sunken eyes roving over her face, the bloodstains in her leather armor, and the caked grime and sludge on her boots from wading in the flooded dungeons. There are tear tracks on her face, she’s sure, where her weeping washed the dirt away. Earlier, she might have been embarrassed, or felt ashamed for grieving, but now, Rhoswen matches her examination stare for stare.

“My Olympia,” she finally says, choking a little on the name, “had faith in you. She believed you would come back. I would dishonor her memory, and our friendship, if I did not do the same now.”

Rhoswen wavers. “I’m so sorry,” she says, for what she thinks might be the thousandth time. It still sounds hollow, and like it will never be enough, but Leliana reaches out and clasps her hand, just the same. The grip is too tight. It grounds her again.

This is Leliana, she realizes, who kissed Olympia in the square and laughed when her cheeks went red, who saw the ache in Rhoswen’s heart and sang for her, after they left the Brecilian Forest. This is Leliana, who suffered and died, and it does not have to be her at all.

After they part, Rhoswen joins Dorian at the back of the room, where Dorian tells her he thinks he’s nearly got it. She does not look at Leliana again, who places herself in front of the doors and prays aloud to the Maker, her offerings lifted to the ceiling and echoed like a chorus. Mourning can come later, when she can stand in front of her own Leliana, the Nightingale who still smiles, although it’s rarer now than it used to be. For now, the best thing she can do is keep her head.

The doors open with a bang and a burst of light. Dorian jumps, but keeps his attention on the spell, unraveling just so under his careful coaxing. Rhoswen won’t turn to look. She can’t, afraid she’ll see Varric, broken and empty of the life that made her love him, or Cassandra, or worst of all, Alistair, finally at what little peace he might find the way he was. The steady twang of Rhoswen’s bow and the sounds of grunts and pained cries reverberate where Leliana’s recital of the Chant had been only moments before. Several of them are Leliana’s own, but whether in exertion or from injury, she doesn’t know.

“Stay put!” Dorian bellows over the noise, teasing something almost tangible out of the amulet between his fingers. “Nearly got it!”

Leliana screams. As the amulet erupts, Rhoswen loses the thread of her resolve and turns, unthinking, to the source of the sound.

Her right arm is gone, left on the ground where it fell. The bow sits next to it, abandoned. Around Leliana lies strewn the bodies of more than a few Venatori and demons. Near the door, a masked Venatori agent with a broken arrow shaft in his leg holds Leliana still for a demon’s strike, all the blood on his uniform his own. She doesn’t bleed like this, Rhoswen reminds herself, as those haunting blue eyes meet hers for what her heart, crying out in agony, tells her is the last time.

Dorian drags her backwards, enveloping her in a piercing white light. For an undeterminable, everlasting, brief moment of time, all Rhoswen can see is the look of surprise on Leliana’s face, the way she claws at her enemy’s hands with the arm she has left, and her lips, forming unknown words she’ll never hear.

 

* * *

 

Filling in the spaces she and Dorian left behind is easy, but uncomfortable. Rhoswen feels herself stretching and molding back into existence, as if she changed size while she was away, and the world around her is muffled and dull, at first. Cassandra holds her blade threateningly towards Alexius, shouting something at him, but her expression is unreadable, blurred, and her voice echoes as if through water. She catches pieces of what she says, gathers enough to know it’s about her disappearance, but it takes so much energy and concentration just to be. She lets it wash over her. The only solid, tangible point of reference she has is Dorian’s hand on her wrist, his grip tight as he guides her into place. How exactly he manages that, she isn’t sure. Even so, it’s his hand pulling, she thinks, putting her back exactly where she belongs.

Even with Dorian’s help, feeling solid again takes several long moments. Dorian struts into physicality as if he never left, no sign of the last few hours on him at all, save perhaps the weary way he takes a deep breath before he turns to a gaping Alexius.

“No,” he says, in response to something Rhoswen hadn’t heard, “she’s still here, I’m afraid. As am I, for that matter.” He tugs at her wrist, just a little, urging her along. Everything brightens and grows louder, more immediate, less hazy, and then – she’s herself again, complete with aches and bruises to prove where she’s been, even if she almost doesn’t believe it.

Down the dais steps, a dozen or so Inquisition soldier-spies flank Cassandra and Varric, who blink up at her with unmasked shock. Next to them stands Fiona, perfectly whole, if looking rather befuddled, and then – her Alistair, a hand on his sword hilt as he stands, stately and golden, as far from his Calling as she is from hers. They all look well, even Alexius, although his face has paled and he seems thunderstruck. Behind him stands Felix, poor Felix, the poison in his blood shouting to Rhoswen as loudly as any Chantry sister ever had. He looks at her with life in his eyes, though, something she wouldn’t have guessed she might miss from a stranger.

And Leliana, she thinks, looking around the room… but of course, she isn’t here. She should be, though, and that’s what troubles Rhoswen. She should be near the front of the room, doors blown wide, monsters pouring through them as she fights to buy them time; her arm lying on the bloodied carpet where someone threw it away...

Rhoswen blinks, and the image is gone again. Leliana is in Haven. She is alive, waiting to receive Olympia, Anders, and Nathaniel... and for Rhoswen to come back, a job well done. There is no blood seeping between the fissures in the stone, no rotted smell of rift magic. Varric’s body doesn’t rest just outside the entryway, his unmoving legs nearly out of her line of sight, and Leliana doesn’t mouth her name, pleading for something, begging for death, maybe–

“Rhoswen?”

The world has moved on without her. There’s a sudden flurry of activity around Alexius, where he is taken in chains as Felix asks politely for fair treatment, gripping his father’s hand until they clap his wrists in irons. Cassandra supervises the soldiers, casting Rhoswen nervous glances as she instructs them on what to do with their new prisoner. Dorian places himself at Felix’s side as they lead Alexius away, speaking quietly, holding him still with one hand perched on his shoulder.

Rhoswen shakes herself, turning to face Alistair. He stands so close, it’s a wonder she didn’t feel him approach. Reaching out as if to touch her, he pulls back again at the last moment, huffing a little bewildered chuckle.

“Of all the places I might have found you,” Alistair says, dropping his arms to his sides, “I have to say this is the one I least expected. What are you doing here?”

“Saving the rebel mages,” Varric answers for her, joining them on the top of the dais. Her heart skipping a beat, Rhoswen double-checks the room for Fiona, looking for her crystalline pillar, for her body twisted and frozen – and finds her respectfully just out of earshot, watching Alexius as he’s led from the room. “Liberating Arl Teagan’s castle for him. Patching the hole in the sky. All the usual business, Your Majesty.”

Varric dips his head respectfully at Alistair, only a hint of playfulness in his tone. Alistair gives him a broad smile in return.

“Well,” Cassandra says. She, too, watches Alexius until the Inquisition soldiers pull the doors partially shut behind them. “The matter of the rebel mages remains. I assume we will be negotiating with the Grand Enchanter, now?”

“With all due respect,” Alistair says, quirking an eyebrow as Fiona moves slightly closer, hearing herself addressed, “I feel as if the Grand Enchanter has very little choice, after all this trouble. The people here won’t look kindly on you, I’m afraid.”

Fiona gives him a blank, sideways look, bowing much the way Varric had done but with less of the natural deference. “Your Majesty has a valid point,” she sighs. “After our regrettable association with Tevinter, and our unwilling participation in the ousting of the Arl, I believe declining any form of protection would be foolish on my part. The rebel mages are willing to take what the Inquisition offers.”

“Better than what Alexius offered, I hope,” Dorian says, a warning note in his tone, eyeing Cassandra. He still has his hand on Felix’s shoulder, poor Felix, swaying on his feet, his skin white as a sheet, nothing left in him as he looked out at them with deadened eyes. Leliana draws the knife across his throat, blood spilling out, coating them all.

Cassandra is in front of her, one gloved hand cold on her chin as she looks intently into her eyes, their noses almost brushing. Rhoswen jerks backwards, away from her grip and the red lyrium glint against her skin – she isn’t supposed to touch it, Varric said; does it count if she touches them? Will it spread to her if she stays too close? What if it spread already, from breathing it in the Redcliffe air? She takes a heaving breath, unable to keep herself from doing it, thinking only of minuscule shards traveling into her lungs and killing her from the inside. Tears streak down her cheeks, uncontrollable, stinging the corners of her eyes.

Something takes hold of her, firm fingers wrapping tightly around her arm so that they almost overlap. She starts again, still struggling against her need to breathe, but a voice cuts through the buzzing in her head, a thousand of Sera’s bees taking up occupancy without her permission. “It’s all right,” Dorian says, taking her other arm and pulling her so that she faces him. He looks serious, gravely serious, but his eyes are kind. “You’re all right now, we’ve left. It’s over.”

“Left where?” Alistair asks, his voice sharp with worry over Rhoswen’s shoulder. Rhoswen nearly turns to look, but Dorian keeps her in place. Her legs feel weak, she realizes, and he’s propping her up as much as he’s encouraging her to look at him. “What’s the matter? Is she–?”

“We had quite the ordeal, while we were away. I suppose we forgot to mention it, didn’t we? Silly of us.”

“What do you mean, an ordeal?” Varric asks.

“You were barely gone for a minute!” snaps Alistair. “How can you…?”

Everyone talks at once, their voices joining the cacophony in her head, unintelligible. Rhoswen closes her eyes against it, but even that isn’t enough. Rift light flickers beneath her lids, her left hand flexing against the power just out of reach, waiting to seek it out. Olympia’s gone – battered to pieces against the castle walls, drowned at the docks, smothered in the rubble at the temple outside Haven. What does it matter if Olympia’s gone?

Another hand presses against her forehead, the touch steeped in what she recognizes by smell as some kind of healing magic. It cuts through the chaos, silencing the tumultuous storm, and for a moment, the world is so peaceful and quiet that Rhoswen’s chest chokes with a sob. When she opens her eyes, Fiona peers back, an almost parental concern in her expression. Her shoulders squared, she shunts Rhoswen backwards into another pair of waiting arms, breaking Dorian’s grip. “Get the poor girl to a bed,” she says, easily assuming command in a way that proves she’s done it many times before. “My people can go ahead without me, if the Inquisition allows. I’ll do what I can here for the Herald.”

“Thank you." Cassandra sounds relieved, her tone thick with worry – for Rhoswen? The thought is a touching one, if a bit distant. “They will be escorted safely. We can continue negotiations once… I’ll arrange it.”

“You’ll be all right,” Dorian says again. Her new supporter hefts her up and cradles her against his chest. She feels herself being taken away, still gasping for air, walked quickly out of the room as a pair of smaller, lighter feet follows behind. Of course it’s Alistair, she thinks fondly as she looks up at him, her Alistair, who gave his life, who carries her as if she weighs nothing, ruined and beautiful, his last kiss branding her forehead.

“What happened?” he whispers to himself. “What happened to you?”

Even if he expects an answer, Rhoswen finds she does not have one.

It takes her some time to calm down again. Fiona shuts Alistair out of the room, much to his dismay, promising him she’ll call him back once Rhoswen’s all right. This gives her a little extra breathing room, which she appreciates, and Fiona doesn’t hover over her the way Alistair might have. Instead, she pulls a chair to the edge of the bed where Rhoswen sits, feeling her forehead again, humming tunelessly as she works small cures into her skin. They take the edge off Rhoswen’s sick headache, and relieve some of the cramping twist in her stomach. Much more importantly, she lets her cry without asking for explanations or offering platitudes, patting her knee gently when she hiccups with it.

“The feeling will pass,” she says, taking Rhoswen’s hand in one of hers. “Remember to inhale.” Fiona even offers Rhoswen her handkerchief, secreted away in a sleeve somewhere, when she starts to drip and sniffle. Ignoring her feeble apologies, Fiona works in relative quiet. She carefully eases her back from the edge of whatever cliff she’d nearly walked off. The thought frightens Rhoswen, how close she’d come to… something. She’s never been so out of control, so utterly beyond herself that she had to be helped back into her own skin. Of course, nothing like the last two or three hours have ever happened to her before, either. Watching Leliana die for her, knowing Alistair and Olympia and all the others had done the same…

Her lip quivers. She bites it to keep it in place.

“Would it help,” Fiona asks, still holding Rhoswen’s hand, “if you shared your experience? Nothing you say to me will leave this room without your agreement. If you’re not ready…”

Rhoswen shakes her head. She’ll have to tell everyone at some point, anyway. It may as well begin with Fiona.

She leaves a handful of details out, both for Fiona’s sake and for her own. She finds she can’t relive some things, not yet, stammering around words that won’t come until she finds a new way to explain. In the end, she thinks it’s enough for Fiona to understand.

“Time magic?” Fiona asks, considering. “Could that explain how Alexius came to us so quickly after the Conclave? If what you said was true, about seeing me in Val Royeaux…” Fiona sighs. “I suppose it does not matter, now that Alexius is dealt with. You’ve done us all a great service, my lady Herald.”

“Please,” Rhoswen whispers. “My name, please.”

Fiona blinks, surprise written in the lift of her brow. In all the years they’ve known each other, however rarely they’ve met, she’s never addressed her by anything but titles. Still, after a moment’s pause, Fiona corrects herself: “Rhoswen.” Her accent changes the pronunciation, just a little. It’s validation and benediction, all at once. Rhoswen almost sags with relief.

Fiona picks up the thread of her own thoughts as if she never left it. “Not least of all, to me, you saved the mages from what would have been a… very unpleasant outcome. I was so desperate to save them, that I… but then, that does not matter either, does it? What is done, is done. Thanks to you, my dear.”

“Dorian.” Rhoswen still finds it hard to speak more than a few words at a time. Her throat is raw, as if she screamed for hours. “Without him, I… I don’t know.”

“Thanks to both of you, then.” Fiona pats Rhoswen’s hand with an air of finality and scoots her chair backwards. She gets to her feet with a grunt, looking a little weary and pale for all her spellcasting. Dorian will have lyrium, Rhoswen remembers, if Alexius hasn’t kept bottles stockpiled somewhere. Before she can tell her so, feeling guilty for wasting so much of her energy, Fiona shakes herself. The weariness is seemingly gone.

“What you saw,” she says as she drags the chair back into place, “was troubling, to say the least. But you must remind yourself that that world is gone. We are all here, and we are all safe. Hold to that.”

Not all, Rhoswen thinks, grimacing. Not yet.

She says, “ _Ma serannas_ ,” instead. She didn’t mean to put it in Elvish, but of course, Fiona understands anyway, both the words and her intent. Inclining her head as a response, she smiles.

“I am surprised,” Fiona says, her lips tilting in a surprisingly teasing curve, “that King Alistair hasn’t battered down the door by now. I’ll retrieve him, with your permission. Undoubtedly, he would like to see you.”

“After I’ve made a fool of myself, in front of everyone.” Rhoswen speaks without thinking, chuckling a little darkly as she dabs at her nose with Fiona’s handkerchief. It feels wrong somehow, hanging in the air between them, but she’s far too late to pull it back.

Fiona stops with her hand on the doorknob, looking back at Rhoswen and frowning. She seems to consider, for a moment, searching for the right words. “Only a select few have endured horrors like the ones you experienced today, and even fewer come away unscathed. No one out there believes you a fool for feeling pain.”

With that, she leaves, shutting the door as she goes. Her footsteps disappear down the hallway, presumably back to the throne room, and Rhoswen is alone. Her feet dangle off the side of a somewhat musty bed in a room she doesn’t recognize, probably in a disused corridor of the castle. Teagan rarely keeps guests in wings that escaped his improvements, especially the older ones, and yet Alistair had brought her here. Perhaps he knew this room, once.

A sudden memory rises, unbidden, of sitting on the floor in a room not unlike this. A crackling fire roars in front of her, travel-worn Warden leathers creaking as she shifts restlessly. She tries to keep her mind away from Morrigan and Alistair, somewhere down the corridor, engaged in a supposed ritual that will save all their lives, and feels miserable in spite of herself.

Ten years have gone by since then. Just enough that she feels old, now, as if she’s seen and experienced plenty for several lifetimes, not only a third of the time she has left. She’s so very tired.

Someone raps on the door, three times – Alistair. Rhoswen tries to call out, but her throat closes up and refuses to cooperate. Luckily, he enters anyway, stepping softly as if he expects to find her asleep. When he sees her, no longer insensible, sitting upright and waiting for him, his face breaks into a gentle smile. Relief floods through his body almost visibly, his entire stance relaxing.

“Sending mages after me?” Alistair asks, leaning against the door as he closes it again. He studies her from where he stands, his gaze roving over her much the same way the other Alistair’s had. Even with the similarities, though, he lacks the quiet desperation and the sense of disbelief. In this world, she’s never abandoned him so long without a word, or left him to think that she was dead. He wears his leather jerkin instead of a dirty shirt, the fur-lined hood discarded somewhere. His hair is clean and short, swept away from his face. This time is real. _He_ is real.

“Should I have asked her to write a note?” Rhoswen says, offering him her own watery grin.

Alistair laughs, a strangled, choked sound. She’s glad he remembers. “Can I…?” he asks, rocking away from the door and taking a slow, careful step forward. “Is that…?”

“Yes,” Rhoswen says, breathing it with more happiness than she remembered being able to feel. “Please.”

Alistair crosses the room in no time at all. Rhoswen nearly stands to meet him, reaching out to touch his cheek, but he bends at the waist and crushes her to his chest instead. The sudden pressure makes her wheeze a little, almost unused to the feeling of being so encompassed, but her arms go around his back and she buries her face in his neck. Stubble scratches against her cheek. Rhoswen closes her eyes.

“Dorian explained,” Alistair says, his voice muffled and a little strained. She feels it vibrate in his throat – clean and clear, no lyrium or Calling distorting his speech. “Not all, but most of it. I can’t imagine… oh, my love, I’m sorry.”

“I’m fine, _ma vhenan_ ,” Rhoswen murmurs into his jerkin. To her surprise, she means it. She still feels a tremor in her hands, just barely noticeable, and she hasn’t forgotten. Not any of it. Here, though… None of it hurts quite as much as it did. Whether that’s a permanent change, or she only feels safe because of Alistair, she’ll call it a first step. “I’ll be fine,” she says again, pulling back to press her hand against his cheek and her forehead to his. “Now you’re here.”

For a long, blissful while, everything else is still.

**Author's Note:**

> Lightning shall rain down from the sky,  
> They shall cry out to their false gods,  
> And find silence.  
> -Canticle of Andraste 7:19


End file.
